Courses
A complete list of courses completed at Simmons College. All course descriptions were taken directly from the Simmons website at http://simmons.edu/gslis/academics/courses/all.shtml.
LIS 403 - Evaluation of Information Services
"The course applies the principles of evaluation research to contemporary information management problems. It covers the fundamentals of identifying and investigating problems relevant to continuous quality enhancement and communicating the results to decision makers."
LIS 404 - Principles of Management
"Designed to acquaint students with the basic management functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The course is intended to help provide understanding of human interactions in the workplace and develop the practical problem-solving skills needed to handle managerial problems professionally. Approaches to managing, from authoritarian to participative to laissez-faire, are examined. Readings, case studies, critical incidents, simulations, and discussions."
LIS 407 - Reference/Information Services
"Covers reference services, searching, and sources. Introduces reference concepts and services, such as the reference interview, customer service, evaluating the reference collection, management, ethics, reference philosophy, service in different institutional settings and for diverse populations, and the assessment of reference services. Students learn how to search in digital and print sources, including full text information retrieval in subscription services and the freely available web. Students become familiar with over two hundred core, fundamental print and digital sources."
LIS 415 - Information Organization
"The phenomena, activities, and issues surrounding the organization of information in service of users and user communities. Topics include resource types and formats, information service institutions, markup, descriptive metadata, content standards, subject analysis and classification, and the information life cycle. Readings, discussions, examinations, and oral and written exercises."
LIS 438 - Introduction to Archival Methods and Services
"Fundamentals of a wide range of archival activities including appraisal, acquisitions, arrangement, description, reference, and access. Overview of history and terminology of the profession. Discussion of the types and varieties of archival repositories and the value of historical records beyond traditional research use. Course includes a required 60-hour internship completed in an archives or manuscript repository."
LIS 440 - Archival Access and Use
"Explores access to and use of archives and manuscript collections within the framework of archival description and representation. How archives are described and the surrogates that are used to represent them profoundly impact their access and use and are central to the archives profession. Students will explore various types of archival use including exhibits (physical and virtual) in addition to the creation of surrogates for primary sources and will gain a theoretical and practical understanding of EAD (Encoded Archival Description) as well as other emerging metadata standards. Course includes a sixty-hour internship project completed in an archives-related setting."
LIS 456 - Managing Records in Electronic Environments
"Records Management is an essential component of archival practice. This course covers the principles, standard, procedures, and technologies utilized in modern recordkeeping and information resources management. Topics include appraisal, scheduling and disposition, systems theory, functional analysis, systems design and electronic records management and policy. Course includes a required 60-hour internship in a records management setting."
LIS 462 - Digital Libraries
"Digital libraries are regulated collections of distributed networked resources made accessible to users, usually through a transparent and standardized interface. This course will examine publicly and privately funded digital library projects in the US and internationally, and will explore evolving definitions and visions, as well as issues such as preservation and intellectual property. Through hands-on investigation, students will also become familiar with the components of digital libraries, and with digital library research. Assignments will include (but are not limited to) papers and presentations."
LIS 471 - Photographic Archives and Visual Information
"Photographs as visual information. Problems of meaning, context, and definition. Responsibilities of the photo archivist. History of major types of photographic artifacts and development of photographic genres. Characteristics of 19th century processes. Special problems of subject access and remote access. Utilization by scholars, visual researchers, and communication industries. Onsite examination of management practices in a variety of institutions. Guest specialists include, when possible, visitors from special libraries, historical societies, major archives, museums, and picture agencies."
LIS 488 - Technology for Information Professionals
"This is a course that provides the conceptual foundation and context of computing, Internet, and digital publishing technologies as used in information-intensive professions. The course will serves as a gateway to all other technology courses offered at GSLIS beginning with the Fall 2005 semester. The course serves to provide a foundation overview of how computers, telecommunications, networking, and digital publishing function. Particular emphasis is upon terminology that appears in the professional literature. Students are strongly encouraged to take this course early in their course program."
LIS 531F - XML eXtensible Markup Language
This course introduces students to eXtensible Markup Language (XML), its role as a standard in enabling and managing metadata applications, and its application as a data-modeling technique. Students create XML schemas and document type definitions (DTDs), and learn to apply transformations using eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). The course examines a wide range of applications of XML in libraries, archives, and related information settings, and considers the technical requirements of making XML-tagged content available and useful to Web browsers and to metadata harvesting applications such as the OAI (Open Archives Initiative). Topics include XML applications in bibliographic utilities, cross-walks between XML and other systems, the role of XML as an alternative or complement to the structured database model, and managing metadata services with XML.
LIS 531K - Archiving and Preserving Digital Media: Sound and Moving Images
Preservation and retention of media in digital environments is an increasing issue for archival repositories. This course focuses on video and sound media but also includes some general discussion of digital preservation. Topics include the evolution of sound and moving image media into a digital world, description and history of moving image formats, ethical and 'rights' issues, and digital asset management.
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